Well, since I knew there was a new Microsoft OS coming out, I've been really enthused about it. I've always loved new software, new updates, cause most of the time it means better stuff, cause if not, why would they release something worse?

So the 29th of July I upgraded to Windows 10 Home from Windows 8.1, and I expected it to be better than my actual W8.1 OS. Well, it only lasted 1 hour in my laptop, because basically, I hated so much all the new interface, new ugly menus, many cool features removed, and it was not adding anything special or better to my system, that I couldn't take it. It was taking away a lot of features, plus all the problems and issues I had with drivers. I'll point out all the stuff that made me rolling back:

1. First, I'll say what's the reason I think provoked all the bad changes. One ring to rule them all. One OS to rule them all. When you create an OS taking into the equation all kind of devices, PC's, laptops, tablets, thinking about smartphones, touch screens, mouses, touch-pens... you clearly end up with a mix of everything that doesn't really satisfy any device at all. You can not create an OS that is useful and optimized for touch screens and also is useful and optimized for mouses and keyboards. You just simply can't. You focus on mouses and keyboards, or you focus on touch screens and tablets. The time you try to mix them both, they both are going to lose a lot. That's why Windows 8 received so many bad reviews. Nobody liked the Metro interface, every single mouse user wanted the classic start menu back, optimized for mouses and keyboards. W8 was criticized really bad in many reviews because of that. So, mixing up all the devices and interfaces makes mouse users deal with touch screen interfaces, really slow if you compare them to a mouse optimized interface, and of course, the worst of it, brief information, a lot of features gone or way more hidden, over-simplistic options, less information per page and less options in the screen, giant buttons, etc.So for the future: focus on mouses and keyboards when working on a PC OS.

2.Icons, icons guys, icons. Icons are SO ugly, they are plain ugly, they all look like Windows 98 icons, no lights, no brightness, no details, no shadows... They're like an orgy between Windows 98 and Android Lollipop. Even the first time I saw the "This PC" icon in the task bar, I didn't know what was it. I though it was a spacecraft or something like that, an app that came with W10. The new recycle bin looks just the same as Windows 98's. All the other icons, like the ones on the Ribbon bar, are the same Lollipop-ish ugly stuff. And don't get me wrong, I love Google's Material Design, but in smartphones, not in PC's. I hated it, it looked like Wandroid 10. One last thing to have in mind: oversimplify comes with distortion, misunderstanding, errors, less information per menu, confusion, loss of features, more clicks of course, slower workflow and headache.So for the future: create icons full of details, shadows, brightness, contrast, and colors, don't create for an advanced 2015 machine a bunch of 20-years-old icons. Create crispier, more beautiful and graphically better icons and interfaces.

3.WiFi options even worse than Windows 8.1?
Yeah, a stunning truth. Fist, the icon is way less clear:

I think we can agree that five "fat" straight vertical bars with different heights, with clear white (ON) and dark grey (OFF) colors are way clearer than 3 thin and tiny quarter circle bars, and more precise too.

Besides the icon clarity and precision, the WiFi options are even worse than Windows 8's. When you right click on the WiFi icon, the menu is pathetic. Just compare Windows 10/8.1/8 to Windows XP:

Just pathetic, simply wrong, just two options. Windows 10 did not solve all the WiFi lack of features of Windows 8.1, but increased the lack of it. Once you click the icon, you get a cooler interface than 8.1's in my opinion, more beautiful with a cool glossy background. But don't let the cool background fool you. Now in Windows 10, you CAN'T refresh the WiFi list, you simply can't. F5 does nothing.
What? Yeah, it does nothing.
And now, you can only, and I mean it, you can ONLY left-click a WiFi in the list and connect to it. That's it. No properties from that menu, no nothing. Just a connect button and that't it.
Really, Microsoft, really? Are you kidding all of us?
You can't see the new cool feature Windows 8 introduced of "estimated data usage", you can't set a "metered connection" (very useful when creating a WiFi hot-spot with your smartphone). Nothing. All disadvantages. Nothing well done. And Windows 8 had this button of ON/OFF You know what that button does, turn off WiFi. Now you have a solid square with the WiFi card name.
What does it mean? Confusion, you won't discover it until you click it. That's the worst enemy of an interface, confusion.
I didn't know what it did until I clicked on it. And it was an ON/OFF button.
Sorting WiFi networks by preference still missing, and pretty much many features and options from Windows XP and 7 are still missing.So for the future: stop destroying and removing features, stop oversimplifying menus so much that now even some items don't have a context menu, stop worsening Windows. Add more features, add clarity, add beautiful menus as the WiFi glossy menu (the only good job you did there).

4.The Control Panel.
What, you didn't like the Metro interface, not only the aesthetics, but the functionality of it using a mouse and the lack of options and the waste of space, only showing a few little settings, plus the giant buttons?
(because that's basically why W8 received so much hate)
Oh, don't worry, serve yourself a full filled large-cup of Metro interface. Welcome to Wandroid 10. The new Control Panel is ugly, a waste of space, is sad, very sad, no colors, atomic blinding white everywhere (more Lollipop stuff, surprise), you feel like you're actually using a Windows Store app instead of Window's Control Panel.
And the very best of all, if you try to change an "advanced option", the Metro Control Panel closes itself and BOOM!, the classic Control Panel appears. Yeah, pathetic, so pathetic.So for the future: Metro is for tablets, giant buttons and options are for touch screens, not for mouses, stop using touch screen interfaces in PC's OS. Create rich and clear settings interfaces full of options, don't create infinite scrolling lists. Improve the classic Control Panel, that should be improved cause some tabs or sections are kind of chaotic (at least for new users).

5.Windows Update.
You, user, have no control over Updates. Even drivers, yeah, Windows Update will download them and install them, it doesn't matter if you want them or not. It will happen. Now you can't even deactivate Windows Update (when I say here that you can't do something, I mean there's not an easy way to do it. Of course you can always mess around with registry, task scheduler and plenty of advanced settings). First, now Windows Update is completely integrated in the ugly Metro Control Panel. So good bye to the nice interface Windows 7, Vista and specially 8 and 8.1 had. Then, the hell, this screen/step is gone:

There was a time when you could see, before download or install any update, every single new update that was gonna be downloaded and installed. You could even select the ones you didn't want and hide them, so Windows would never remind them again, unless you tell Windows to show them again. This was a very important and basic "feature" to have cause, besides giving you full control of what gets installed in your PC, I've suffered plenty of times that Windows installed a new sound driver that didn't work, and hiding that update was enough to avoid it. Basically, I want to have control over what gets installed in my PC and what not. This is a total failure of OS.
In Windows 8, yeah, we had the Metro Control Panel, but it wasn't nuclear white, it mixed more colors and the most important thing, it was OPTIONAL. If you didn't want to see Metro, you just needed to disable right and left upper corners charms and install something like Classic Shell to get rid of the Start Metro screen. Classic Shell instead provide a very powerful and customizable start menu that boosts the efficiency and workflow up to the heaven. Many, many options, you can change the start menu icon, even create your own, change colors, icons to show, folders... Classic Shell's developers should teach Microsoft how to create the perfect start menu.
And of course, there are a lot more programs that install a classic start menu, but Classic Shell is free and I think is the best of all of them by far. Indeed, the first thing I did when I installed Windows 10 is replace the new start menu by Classic Shell's menu and import my settings.
The interface in Windows Update is Metro, plain ugly, basic, seems like you're using Android Lollipop and not a PC, and is less clear, it has less options, less features, less control, less colors, less everything.So for the future: let users see and select what updates are going to be installed and what drivers and other stuff is Windows Update going to download and install, and let them decide what they want in their system. And we don't want Metro in our PC's.

6.Windows Explorer. Good bye to personalization. Don't you love the all-white interface of the new Metro Control Panel?
Wait, we have a new surprise. Meet the nuclear white interface of the new Windows Explorer. They love white, that's for sure. In W8, you could select a color from the "personalize" menu that affected: task bar, windows bars, volume and brightness controls, windows interface in general... And you could select any color, literally, any color. You wanted a more mate pink, you can get it. You wanted plain dark black, you can get it. Now you can say farewell to all those colors options, and now Microsoft has decided that all the windows must be white, now you are not in control of the windows bar colors.
These little interface tweaks are the ones that make your PC so personal. My aunt loves the garden background picture I set in her PC and all the light-green windows bar she has and fit the background color. Classic Shell's start menu is green. When she opens a Word document, the bar is green as she wanted, when she opens a picture, the Windows Photo Viewer's window bar is green. She can open Chrome and she can already detect that it's her computer because of the green. Everywhere she works on has a bar that is personalized as she want. And it's not even a generic green or a preset green. It's the exact tone of green she wants, cause we know that when we work with preset colors, we never find the exact tone we want. Well, not with W8 and its infinite palette of colors.
But now with Windows 10, you got to eat all the white they want you to eat. Ugly, ugly by definition. And say also good bye to the infinite palette, now you can only use the preset colors they want you to use.
What do you think my aunt would say if I were crazy enough to update her PC?
Yeah, what is this, where's my lovely green, why did you installed this new thing that doesn't let me personalize and set my windows as I want, why everything is white, I want my PC to be as personalizable and beautiful as it was. When you change volume settings or brightness settings, the color is also white, it's not even colored with the preset color you selected.
And now clarity, windows in the background are white, windows in the front are also white, the only difference between the window you're working on and one in the background is that the name of the windows is 3-4 tones (grey) darker. This must be a joke, this must be a joke.
Also, after using it for 20 minutes, I couldn't find my way to hide the "Quick Access" and "Cloud Drive" menus from the left column of the Windows Explorer, while in Windows 8 I could remove all those "favorite" categories and stuff. Great.So for the future: well, don't destroy interfaces completely, never destroy interfaces completely again. Don't you ever use again nuclear white everywhere, we had enough with Android Lollipop. Don't create new OS's that have objectively less customization than the previous ones. Let users set their own colors, don't limit something that wasn't limited previously. Do better things, not worse things.

7.Bigger contextual menus. Again, tablets. Now you right-click an icon, and the items in the menu are noticeably more separated, which means bigger contextual menus that doesn't fit at all a PC with a mouse. The separation of the items in all the previous Windows is the same, and it is perfect for mouses, it's clearly a separation that has been studied to be comfortable. Now we have illogically bigger menus that are objectively worse than all the previous Windows because of the space, and if you mix that with a PC that has a lot of programs with its own entries in the context menu, you will end up with a total waste of space and less efficiency.
Also, I though they were gonna solve the annoying position of the context menu when you right-click a minimized window:

In Windows 7 and previous versions, the close button was next to the cursor, 1 pixel away from it. In Windows 8 and later, it changed and now it doesn't matter where you click or where's your cursor, the menu is going to appear few mm over the minimized window, or over the minimized window, so you can't close, for example, windows as fast as in Windows 7, Vista or XP. And as you have to move your mouse more, you can mistakenly click on "Pin this program to..." and get the party started.
So sadly and illogically, Windows 10 doesn't change that, it uses the same wrong position over the minimized window.So for the future: bring back the normal and nice separation in context menus, stop thinking about tablets and touchscreen, start thinking about mouses. Fix the position of the context menu of minimized windows in the task bar, just look at Windows 7 and previous OS, optimize the space and position of context menu for mouses.

8. Drivers. My external WiFi card that worked flawlessly in Windows 8.1 with its specific, SPECIFIC, Windows 8.1 drivers, now doesn't. I don't know how Microsoft have the guts to release a new Windows OS that is not fully compatible with drivers that are from 2014 and are released specifically for its latest Windows 8.1 OS, which is almost the same, but better than 10.

After making all the companies release drivers for Windows 8.1, now they are again making them release new drivers specifically for W10?
Couldn't they just create a "new" OS that is fully compatible with drivers for Windows 8.1, which is almost exactly the same?

Seriously, this is a joke. Now I have to wait for the manufacturer to release new drivers for W10. That's just unacceptable, they should and must provide an OS that is fully compatible with, at least, Windows 8.1 drivers. And that's an easy example, cause an external WiFi card has no settings, and you install a driver that works or that doesn't. But the fun part comes when you have a touchpad, a "weird" or advanced drivers for audio speakers, keyboards that are different from the typical standard keyboard, and all of that.
My touchpad became a touchpad from 2004, with only 2 buttons and one finger for moving the cursor. Before, I had a Windows 8.1 driver that let me make gestures with two fingers, three fingers, four finger gestures and stuff. Now I have to deal with a prehistoric touchpad. Maybe in the near future I could get a generic driver that let me just scroll with two fingers, but good bye for good to all the features I had.
My JBL speakers stopped working with my Dolby Home Theater v4, because the new drivers were incompatible with my older W8.1 ones. It has just a generic driver, and that's it. The sound worked, but the Dolby Home Theater panel didn't, that gave a boost that was stunningly amazing, doubling the dB without distortion and letting you set cool effects like surround, increase voices, increase bass... that totally changed the game when watching films or playing video-games, and also when listening to music. Gone, and I have no hope at all that any new W10 drivers will ever be compatible with the Dolby panel.

Yeah, I know these specific drivers problems are happening just to me, but any other laptop with non-generic and basic drivers is messed up too. It's a joke specific Windows 8.1 drivers are not compatible with W10, a total joke.So for the future: Windows 8.1 drivers, even Windows 8 drivers, should and must be totally compatible with Windows 10, cause if not, you're gonna destroy infinite non-basic standard hardware that had advanced features that worked only with its specific Windows 8/8.1 drivers. You can't create an almost identical OS and destroy all the drivers compatibility of the previous one. We're not talking about Windows XP drivers, or even Windows 7. We're talking about Windows 8/8.1 drivers, an OS that is almost the same, and Windows 10 could be just a Service Pack for Windows 8.1.

9. Slower boot. I don't know if it's because my cache SSD software now is not compatible with Windows 10, but my lenovo took in Windows 8.1 18 second from shut down state to Chrome opened and showing Google fully loaded. I installed Windows 10, and after rebooting and updating everything, and rebooting several times, I achieved 33 seconds in the same boot up sequence. And I'm not the only one, I've read plenty, plenty of users complaining about their PC's being slower when using Windows 10, some SSD's not working well, issues with Samsung Magician...So for the future: well, it's enough, it doesn't matter.

And now, the advantages and new features that Windows 10 brings, the stuff that could improve the OS so much you would want to deal with all the stuff up here and install Windows 10:

Cortana: useless. For me, useless. Useless in a PC.
Is it cool to talk to your PC?
Yeah.
Does Cortana provide new stuff?
Well, yeah, you can ask her when Obama was born, or you can just Google it and find way, way, way more info.
Do you think it could be useful?
Yeah, some people might find it fun to use, but in the end, navigating Chrome with a keyboard and a mouse is way more faster and efficient, as you can open new windows, tabs, save information here, there...
I would never use it as I don't find it useful. When you're in a silent place, you can't talk, and I think it would be really boring to use it after a month.
Cortana is this kind of program that you use when friends come home and say "Hey, look what my PC can do". But that's it. In your smartphone, when you're in the car, well, Cortana is useful, as well as Siri. But in a PC, no. Few little tasks, if any, will be done faster using Cortana, and of course if you want to change advanced settings, let's say, when adding a new event in the calendar, Cortana won't be suitable.

Desktops: there are plenty of apps that are way better and way more customizable than Windows's multiple desktops. And if you wanted this feature so hard, well, you must know that if you haven't used multiple desktops in Windows before Windows 10 is only because you didn't want. I find it useful when you're using Windows with a lot of windows opened. I wouldn't use it, I've never had the need to use multiple desktops.
It's a new welcome feature, but only new from Microsoft, cause all the people out there that wanted to use multiple desktops in Windows have been using since the origins of time Dexpot, Yod'm 3D, Virtual Dimension, VirtuaWin, HydraVision...

Start menu: that Microsoft claims W10 has a start menu back when talking about new features is pretty self-explaining of how little to nothing has been done. I don't care about the mini Metro start menu, and Classic Shell is 10000 times better than any Windows start menu. It doesn't matter if I use W7, XP, Vista, 8, 8.1 or 10, I always install Classic Shell start menu cause is the God of the Gods of all the start menus, and it's free. As I told before, Classic Shell developers should teach Windows how to make the perfect start menu.

Microsoft Edge: I expected a kick-ass version of Internet Explorer, which by the way, Windows 8.1's IE 11 was pretty amazing, and it was definitely faster and smoother than even Chrome. Nevertheless, the lack of extensions and customization swamped it into the darkness. And Microsoft doesn't care. Also, Flash player and some other stuff was sometimes buggy.
But, what did I get?
A pathetic giant Android browser, with an interface and menus that are a straight copy of smartphones browsers, again nuclear white, but wait, here you can change the skin to an even more ugly plain dark black theme. It's just another Windows Store app that is useless, again lack of customization, again no extensions, again nothing.
Did you navigate in the settings?
It's like you were in an Android emulator, testing an Android Browser. No windows, no advanced options, no nothing.
Thanks, I'm gonna stay with Chrome, Firefox and IE11.

Continuum: I will never get why would I ever want that 2 different, completely different devices, look the same. My smartphone doesn't look as my PC, the desktop backgrounds are different, darker backgrounds in smartphones provide better battery life, and... I won't explain why a touchscreen with battery should be set and configured different from your PC settings and stuff. Also, I don't know why the hell would I ever want to continue a PC session on a tablet. If I don't have time to finish a work in my PC, I'll save it for later when I'm home. And if it's urgent, I can connect my smartphone, copy the doc, and finish it when travelling. Nevertheless, I've never, ever done this, because things I do in my PC are way, way different from things I do in my smartphone.

CMD: now you can ctrl+v and ctrl+c. Wow, finally Microsoft dares to implement short cuts in CMD. But in order to implement them, we really needed a "new" OS and all it's new issues and incompatibility to add that features to CMD. Yeah.

Windowed apps: Apps are for tablets, apps come from tablets, tablets are always full screen, apps are always full screen, windowed apps are the less necessary thing you could ever imagine about app's features. It's useful in one or two apps, yeah, but I bet my PC these apps can be replaced by a real program that is x1000 times better and can be windowed with more sense. Useless things. Windows 8.1 let you minimized apps to the taskbar, and it was nice as it was.

Final though: I lose quite a lot of everything and I get quite a lot of nothing.

Features I would expect to to have in a 2015 OS, and actual improvement of Windows 8.1:

1. Create a WiFi hotspot. Smartphones have it, and it's one of the coolest thing smartphones can do. Why notebooks still can't? Let's say you got an external WiFi card that is way more powerful than your smartphone's antenna. Boom, you share your notebook's connection and you're done. Let's say you're with friends in the campus and you got access to your college WiFi using your student account. WiFi hotspot and every single friend can access to a fast internet connection. Let's say you don't wanna share your house's WiFi password. Right-click on the WiFi icon, activate hotspot, and done, you have a private new hotspot, lets say "MyLaptopWiFi" and password "123456". Done.

2. Improve Windows Explorer. I know a lot of users that have the Music/Pictures folders correctly sorted, but Windows Explorer is useless if you want a standard view in folders and subfolders. Fix that! For example, I have in my music folder all my favorite artists folder. In each artist, I have each different album in a different folder, and of course, in each album folder all the songs I love. It would be a great improvement if you could set the sort and view of all the artists folders, and all the albums folders. It's easy to sort all artist by name and set the view to Extra Large. But you can't set all the sub folders view in each artist album to Large, you have to do it manually. And you can't sort by track number all the mp3 and other audio files you have neither, or sort by release date all the album folders. You got to do it manually.

3. Improve Ribbon. The first time I saw the Ribbon bar I thought it needed a personalize menu. Still, in Windows 10, missing. It would be nice to sort and add to a single tab of Ribbon all the different tools you use: cut, paste, copy, delete, view, show hidden items, etc. Nothing, you gotta still mess around with the tabs because you can't personalize it.

4. Improve Windows functions. How many of you users have been renaming a whole folder? I think every single one. Windows could create different "modes" for different functions. For example, rename mode, where you can left- click and rename all the time, or you can use the TAB key to rename next item, and like that, many, many things.

5. Improve and edit context menu. I've had to find my way to edit context menu. In the root context menu, it would be perfect if you could add or delete item entries, like "Create new folder", "Open with this program", delete items you don't use, add specific item entries for specific files, for example, if you right click an audio file, set the context menu to have Open with these 3 different programs (but only in audio files), etc.

8. Thumbnails. If you have pictures in folder A, and folder A is in folder B, and folder B is in folder C, the thumbnail of folder C should show pictures of folder A. This would work perfect in the music folders of many, many users.

9. Audio files tag editor that can face actual good ones. This, and many other basic programs, should be integrated in Windows some day so we don't have to search for audio tag editors all over the web and find the best one. A nice start was to integrate a ISO mount tool. I couldn't believe it when I first saw the Windows 8 could mount ISO's. We need more of that, we need more integrated, basic tools.

10. Task Manager improved. Windows 8 was a big jump in this. But we want more. A more customizable graphics displaying the info we want, the temperatures of the processor cores, their different MHz, the speed of the fans, a internet band width limiter, to be able to minimize to the icon bar (left-down) a mini graphic of the Hard Disk usage, so we can determine if the PC is being slow due to the Hard Disk or not, the temperatures and usage of graphics cards, etc.

11. Screen recorder that works flawlessly with Windows. And like that, many other tools you could need.

12. Animated backgrounds from Windows, that change depending on the hour of the day, or depending on the brightness of the room (kind notebooks only). This is the kind of cool stuff that makes you enjoy your every day computer tasks. After more than 20 years, you got to still rely on exe's programs that install backgrounds.

And that's just the ideas of a single user that don't know anything, and I'm sure any clever user here could add more wonderful ideas I'd share 100%.

So... I'm rolling back to Windows 8.1.

Last edited by rambomhtri; 04 Aug 2015 at 08:27.

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What is absolutely ridiculous is the fact that you can't control app sounds anymore! Try installing any of those games from the store, and you'll be surprised when you find out that you can't turn their volume down like you could in W 8.1! See for yourself...

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One more thing: I can't see how much traffic went through a specific Wi-Fi network, when I click on a connected network in the menu I don't see show metered connection like there was in 8.1 anymore. So many useful functions stripped away...

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Generally I have to contradict, I like Windows 10, I consider it to be a far better os than Windows 8.1. But what I also dislike is the lack of customization. Customize the Start menu? Forget it, it's like it is, be happy that we allow you to add tiles. Customize the task bar? Well, we let you add shortcuts, isn't that enough? Customizing the lock screen? Well we thought it would be fun to add an option for this that does not work, muaahh ha ha...

My hope is that those possibilities will be added later. And as much as the Start menu is concerned I've already reverted to Classic shell which I can customize as I please.

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Hahahahahah man great review. I like it but you have right about lot of things especially the look. Really is that hard to make custom UI or icons and download it, I dunno but they should do that. Start menu and toolbar is ok but icons are strange.

Also they removed the update details so we cant see what is updated/fixed in particular update we downloaded. Why?

Boot- yes its slower than 8.1 and 7 boot.

Also I got the problem with administrator permission on my account- same as in 8.1. Just cant give admin right to my account. Tried everything. Now on 10 I cant even see my account when Im logged in as admin. Strange.

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One can review and rant and not come off like a troll, and you accomplished it very well. You presented your opinion and reasoning, you have my respect, even if you don't have my current OS. :)

My only caveat is on section 8 - drivers: this really isn't on MS.

The TP has been out for a while, if there isn't a driver available for something like your wifi card, I'd be screaming at that OEM, they had plenty of time to check their drivers against the builds of the OS - that's why it was given out in the first place.

Now in part though, the forced driver updates - I have a DV7 lappy that got borked along with alot of others when MS pushed out crappy Synaptics touchpad drivers, it got resolved, but two weeks of lappy use with a tethered mouse drive me nuts. In that case both were to blame.

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